Repulsion - Ashamed

Day 985.

I don’t want to write this because I am ashamed.

I have delayed committing this to paper all night.

It’s 2:00 AM

But I delay, even now, like I delay vomiting, delaying the inevitable.

Luke’s birthday has come and gone.

We gathered his friends and ours, released the butterflies, and ate Eton mess.

I felt no presence of Luke.

Nor did George.

He wasn’t here for his party in either body nor spirit.

The concrete in my body grew heavy, and I felt isolated, in a bubble, as the friends chatted.

The night before, I sat out here, flicking through the photos of Luke on my phone, and trying to find my connection with him.

And then I had to face the thing I had felt for some time, and I was, and am, ashamed.

And it is this:

There are photos of Luke on my phone that repulse me.

It’s not so much the photo itself, but the photo invokes the revulsion I felt in his life, at the moment they were taken.

I stare at the photos now. There’s nothing obvious to repulse me in this high functioning boy. But they do.

I am lost and the tears fall now, but not freely.

In the last months of Luke’s life, there were times that I sat before him and was repulsed.

I can no longer hide it. It won't go away.

Every time I see these photos, the repulsion revisits, and I skip to a photo from when he was sober, for comfort, avoiding what I cannot bare to feel.

I am so ashamed.

Oh Luke, I am so sorry, can you hear me? Are you reading this? I hope you cannot.

What is this repulsion? 

Was I sensing that my boy was gone?

Was I sensing that on a cellular level, you were a stranger to me?

The memories of those moments flood back to me, even the moments without the photograph.

His birthday was one of these moments.

The intimate ceremony of our family tradition to wake eachother singing Happy Birthday, bursting into the room with a tray of tea or coffee, pastries, and arms laden with gifts.

Luke sat up in bed and opened his gifts, and I looked at him, repelled by what I saw.

It was to be his last birthday on this earth.

The guilt is overwhelming, an emotion unfamiliar to me.

The gifts I had chosen with so much thought, so much love, wrapped and ribboned with love as if, I feel now, they were bought for another version of Luke than that which was before me.

Love and repulsion side by side.

What kind of fucking mother am I?

What caused this?

Was I out of love with him?

The thought then, as now, is unbearable.

I now know that he was playing a dangerous game with his drug use, although I still have no real idea to what extent.

Was I sensing that this was not my boy before me?

I sit here writing with that offending photo open on my iPad, as I try to sit with my pain and repulsion, no longer denying it - but trying to feel around in it for answers.

William Seifritz filmed protoplasm, the life force of all that is living, and it is a beautiful thing to behold.

Once heroin is injected into it, it melts and loses its form, and is no longer a thing of beauty, but unpleasant to watch.

Is it possible that it was that I was sensing in Luke? 

Was I sitting watching my beautiful boy, no matter how functional, deconstructing on a cellular level?

Did he sense that?

Oh God no! Please God no! I hope not!

As I hope he doesn’t sense it now.

Is that why he’s not about me?

And, if I did sense that … why didn’t I do something?

But what?

When we were apart, communicating by text, or phone, or just connecting in thought, I did not feel this way.

The love was there.

The connection was there.

There was no revulsion.

It was only in physical presence that I sensed this, often with, as in many of these photos, with flesh exposed.

Was I giving up on him?

Or had he already left me?

Or was, at least, his final journey set?

And so I withdrew?

Was he deep inside, crying out to me, “Mum help me! I’m in here! Help me!”

The sobbings of my agony are upon me now and I recall that it was only fourteen hours later that I was on the set downtown, bearing Eton mess for the crew to celebrate my boy, watching, enchanted by my Luke.

As I watched him work, brilliant, and vibrant - no repulsion there.

The nights we sat here chatting, I realize now, he would have been high.

Did I only struggle, as he likely did, when he was in withdrawal? Or without whatever made him feel better about himself?

Did my cells feel that?

Was it revulsion I felt? Or something else that scared me so, that I interpreted as revulsion, because it was actually fear?

An emotional flight response?

I stare at the same offending photos now after writing this, and the repulsion is losing its power and shifting to love, for that wonderful boy - just like that!

I wrote my way through an emotion that terrified and shamed me.

I faced it and I committed it to paper. I opened light onto it. And now it's power is gone.

My pencil, I now see, is gilded with “WRITE THAT SHIT DOWN!”

I heard Luke say that as I delayed committing this to paper.

I was not going to make this public. I didn’t want anyone to know about this, because I was so ashamed. 

But now I hear Luke urging me otherwise…

“Oh right! You’re going too keep this to yourself? How many other mothers feel the same? Are you really not going to share this? Are you really going to leave them to strangle themselves in shame? Just to preserve yourself? Fuck that!”

Ok Luke, you are right.

That’s the lukelove mission.

That’s what all the emails say from readers of my book.

I told my unpleasant truth, and it showed them they were not alone.

Shine lukelove on it, and its evil power dies.

I’ll stare at these photos some more now, safe that I need not fear the many more.